Mystery

Stephen Amidon’s Locust Lane begins late at night, with a dog run over by an alcoholic fund manager. Patrick is well over the limit: “He didn’t need another item in the overladen shopping cart of guilt he was pushing around.” He vacillates, and then scarpers, setting up the novel’s themes of addiction, accident, power and privilege, and how far people will go to save themselves. Questions of nature and nurture abound: does monstrous behavior pass down the generations, or is it learned and acquired? And what lengths will communities go to in order to protect their own? Locust Lane is a street in the town of Emerson. It’s a tony neighborhood, whose vast, spotless houses contain apparently equally spotless WASP-y families, insulated by centuries of accumulated wealth.